NOTES FOR A NEW AMERICA

Too long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage. He has not come; he never will come. I would not lead you out if I could for if you could be led out, you could be led back again. -- Eugene V. Debs

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. -- Edmund Burke

What you do is of little significance. But it is very important that you do it - Gandhi

Activism is my rent for living on this planet - Alice Walker

BOOKS

HOW INTERNET RADIO CAN CHANGE THE WORLD: AN ACTIVIST'S HANDBOOK

BUILDING POWERFUL COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS: A Personal Guide to Creating Groups That Can Solve Problems and Change the World, by Michael Jacoby Brown, Long Haul Press, $19.95.

CALLING ALL RADICALS: How Grassroots Organizers Can Save Our Democracy, by Gabriel Thompson, Nation Books, $14.95.

TOOLS FOR RADICAL DEMOCRACY: How to Organize for Power in Your Community, by Joan Minieri and Paul Getsos, Chardon Press, $29.95.

MAY 2008

HOW TO GET A POLICE CHIEF TO BACK OFF SNEAKY, ILLEGAL SEARCHES

DC's police chief Kathy Lanier came up with a plan to get people to allow officers to search their homes for any object by granting them immunity only from the city' gun law. The local ACLU, led by Johnny Barnes, got on the case with a door to door information campaign that soon turned into a neighborhood march. With this sort of protest, Chief Lanier soon backed off of her sneaky search scheme.

APRIL 2008

HOW MEXICAN ACTIVISTS USE BLOCKADES

FEBRUARY 2008

PRAIRIE VIEW A&M STUDENTS TAKE ON THE GOP

RURAL VOTES - Texas Republicans have worked overtime to make it harder for key Democratic voting groups to vote and be represented fairly. For the Prairie View A&M University precincts, they put the early-polling place more than seven miles from the school. So what did the students do? They shut down the highway as they marched seven miles to cast their votes on the first day of early voting.

JANUARY 2008

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE CONCEALED PUBLIC HEARING ABOUT RESTRICTING PROTESTS ON THE MALL; PAST USERS NOT NOTIFIED

ANSWER COALITION - At a public meeting called by the National Park Service in Washington, D.C., representatives from the Partnership for Civil Justice, ANSWER Coalition, Nicaragua Network, Grassroots America, ImpeachBush.org and others demanded that there be no new restrictions placed on the right of the people to access the National Mall for free speech activities.

The National Park Service is undertaking an plan similar to that launched to exclude protests from New York City's Great Lawn. It will be used to further restrict or ban protest on the Mall from current levels. This is part of a nationwide campaign of corporate-sponsored organizations working in partnership with government entities that claim that protests, rallies and demonstrations harm grass, green space or natural resources and must therefore be restricted or banned or shunted off to designated protest pits. The National Mall has been used for decades as the site for mass assembly protest and gatherings.

A lawsuit filed by the Partnership for Civil Justice on behalf of the National Council of Arab Americans and the ANSWER Coalition successfully overturned regulations in New York City that were used to prevent mass assembly protest in the Great Lawn of Central Park during the Republican National Convention

The NPS has set up a "public-private" partnership that allows business interests and real estate developers -- in coordination with the government -- to determine the future of the National Mall. The Jan. 12 public meeting was intended to have low attendance to allow the government to claim public involvement while simultaneously excluding it. When confronted with the fact that they had done no legitimate outreach about the public meeting to the hundreds of thousands of people who have actually used the National Mall, the President of the Trust for the National Mall responded that she had sent notice to the Board of Trade. The NPS issues 3,000 permits a year for the use of the National Mall, but there has been no effort to notify any of those organizations about the proposed changes.

TO WRITE THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

OCTOBER 2007

GREAT MOMENTS IN ACTIVISM:
THE BLUE TAPE SCREED

BOOKSHELF: BUILDING NEW COMMUNITY

BUILDING POWERFUL COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS: A Personal Guide to Creating Groups That Can Solve Problems and Change the World, by Michael Jacoby Brown, Long Haul Press, $19.95.

CALLING ALL RADICALS: How Grassroots Organizers Can Save Our Democracy, by Gabriel Thompson, Nation Books, $14.95.

TOOLS FOR RADICAL DEMOCRACY: How to Organize for Power in Your Community, by Joan Minieri and Paul Getsos, Chardon Press, $29.95.

BENNETT BAUMER, CITY LIMITS Three recent books serve as guides to organizers building community groups, unions and other social change organizations. Two of these works could be characterized as textbooks – "Tools For Radical Democracy," by Joan Minieri and Paul Getsos, and "Building Powerful Community Organizations," by Michael Jacoby Brown. "Calling All Radicals," by Gabriel Thompson, gives helpful tips on organizing while maintaining a more anecdotal narrative flow. . . "Tools For Radical Democracy" and "Building Powerful Community Organizations" are the most explicit about how to build organizations for social change. . . . Both books offer various case studies, rooted in Getsos' coalition-building in uptown Manhattan and Jacoby Brown's decades' worth of agitating around workplace issues across the country. The textbooks also offer exercises and work sheets at the ends of chapters on such mundane organizing work as phone banking, door knocking, media relations and preparing testimony to elected officials. . . While the above books are basically practical manuals, Thompson's "Calling All Radicals" is more directed at the heart. As a former housing organizer in central Brooklyn, Thompson believes organizers are the key to building democracy and illuminates how they do the grunt work. Thompson presents tenants standing up to slumlords, and politicians reluctant to enact a tough lead paint bill, not as case studies but as part of a social justice story. . . "Calling All Radicals" also examines Alinsky's organizing model and asks the provocative question – why do organizers do what they do, and to what end?

JANUARY 2007

A LETTER TO THOMAS JEFFERSON

[We recently came across this while rummaging through our files. It was written by Edward Schwartz of the Institute for the Study of Civic Values for Social Policy in 1974]

Mr. Thomas Jefferson
Continental Congress
Independence Hall
Philadelphia, Pa.

Dear Mr. Jefferson:

We have read your "Declaration of Independence" with great interest. Certainly, it represents a considerable undertaking, and many of your statements do merit serious consideration. Unfortunately, the Declaration as a whole fails to meet recently adopted specifications for proposals to the Crown, so we must return the document to you for further refinement. The questions which follow might assist you in your process of revision.

1. In your opening paragraph you use the phrase "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God." What are these laws? In what way are they the criteria on which you base your central arguments? Please document with citations from the recent literature.

2. In the same paragraph you refer to the "opinions of mankind." Whose polling data are you using? Without specific evidence, it seems to us, the "opinions of mankind" are a matter of opinion.

3. You hold certain truths to be "self-evident." Could you please elaborate. If they are as evident as you claim, then it should not be difficult for you to locate the appropriate supporting statistics.

4. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" seem to be the goals of your proposal. These are not measurable goals. If you were to say that "among these is the ability to sustain an average life expectancy in six of the 13 colonies of at least 55 years, and to enable all newspapers in the colonies to print news without outside interference, and to raise the average income of the colonists by 10 percent in the next 10 years," these would be measurable goals. Please clarify.

5. You state that "whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government. ..." Have you weighed this assertion against all the alternatives? Or is it predicated solely on the baser instincts?

6. Your description of the existing situation is quite extensive. Such a long list of grievances should precede the statement of goals, not follow it.

7. Your strategy for achieving your goal is not developed at all. You state that the colonies "ought to be Free and Independent States," and that they are "Absolved from All Allegiance to the British Crown." Who or what must change to achieve this objective? In what way must they change? What resistance must you overcome to achieve the change? What specific steps will you take to overcome the resistance? How long will it take? We have found that a little foresight in these areas helps to prevent careless errors later on.

8. Who among the list of signatories will be responsible for implementing your strategy? Who conceived it? Who provided the theoretical research? Who will constitute the advisory committee? Please submit an organization chart.

9. You must include an evaluation design. We have been requiring this since Queen Anne's War.

10. What impact will your program have? Your failure to include any assessment of this inspires little confidence in the long-range prospects of your undertaking.

11. Please submit a PERT diagram, an activity chart, and an itemized budget.

We hope that these comments prove useful in revising your "Declaration of Independence."

Best Wishes,

Lord North

NOVEMBER 2006

MOTHERS FIGHT LACTOSE INTOLERANCE WITH A NURSE-IN

MSNBC - Babies at the breast, protest signs close by, nursing mothers staged "nurse-in" demonstrations in airports across the country Tuesday, rallying behind a woman ordered off a plane for breast-feeding her daughter too openly. "I truly hope it does get the message across," said Becky Fontana, 29, nursing her four-month-old daughter as she sat cross-legged on the terminal floor at Burlington [VT] International Airport.

About 25 women turned out here, parking themselves near a Delta Air Lines ticket counter in a peaceful - but not-so-quiet - demonstration mirroring those in airports in Boston, Columbus, Nashville, Tenn., Harrisburg, Pa., Hartford, Conn., Albuquerque, N.M., Louisville, Ky. and elsewhere. In all, more than two dozen demonstrations were planned. Story continues below ? advertisement. Some of the women carried hand-lettered signs saying "Don't be lactose intolerant" and "Breasts - Not just for selling cars anymore.". . .

On Oct. 13, Emily Gillette, 27, of Santa Fe, N.M., was ordered off a Freedom Airlines flight about to take off from Burlington International Airport after a flight attendant asked her to cover up while she was breast-feeding her 1-year-old daughter.

She had been sitting on the New York-bound plane - which was three hours late departing - when she began nursing, prompting the flight attendance to hand her a blanket. When she refused it, the female flight attendant had her removed from the plane, along with her husband and child.

The airline later disciplined the unidentified worker. . .

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15833953/

GOOD DAYS FOR LESSER SEATTLE

SAM HOWE VERHOVEK, LA TIMES - For believers in a Lesser Seattle, it's been a fantastic month. First, Seattle voters said a resounding "no" to spending public money on a new professional basketball arena, all but begging the NBA Supersonics to leave town. Strong opposition has also emerged to the mayor's plans for a Big Dig-style tunnel project along the waterfront. And, in a capstone, the National Weather Service announced last week that November, far from over, was already the rainiest month here in nearly 75 years.

Wonderful, from the Lesser Seattle point of view. Let the word go out. Who'd ever want to live here?

"Lesser Seattle" was a term coined in the 1980s by late newspaper columnist Emmett Watson, as a puckish play on Greater Seattle Inc, the name of an early group of tourism and growth promoters. It never became a formal organization, but Lesser Seattle is nonetheless a powerful and enduring state of mind. . .

Plenty of people welcome growth and development. But plenty say Seattle has given up too much of its blue-collar soul in the process. "Part of our civic makeup is this idea that being too big for your britches is a bad thing," says Knute Berger, former editor of the Seattle Weekly newspaper. "In that sense, Lesser Seattle is due for a resurgence."

Al Runte, a former University of Washington history professor and former mayoral candidate, says he detects an "enough is enough" sentiment among voters in their passage, by nearly 75%, of the initiative barring public funds for a new basketball arena.

"A city of this quality does not need to give incentives to developers," he says. "They should be paying taxpayers for the privilege of being in this city.". . .

AUGUST 2006

CANVASSING FOR GOOD CAUSES MAY BE LOSING THE LEFT SOME GOOD ACTIVISTS

GREG BLOOM, IN THESE TIMES - There's a word that gets tossed around in canvassing offices to describe people like Christian Miller: "scrappy." That's not because of his skinny frame and sparse, wiry chin-scrabble. Rather, in an industry where the average career lasts two weeks, Miller, 28, canvassed door-to-door throughout Los Angeles for four years.

In the last 30 years, canvassers like Miller have become the most common-if unsung-figures in political activism, going door-to-door or standing on busy street corners to talk to people about various public interest issues. It took Miller a minute to tick through the long list of campaigns for which he'd raised money: solar energy bills, forest protection, Sierra Club, Human Rights Campaign. All were operated by the same company: the Fund for Public Interest Research (commonly known as "the Fund"), a national nonprofit founded by the Public Interest Research Groups in 1982. Since then, canvassers for the now-ubiquitous state PIRGs have raised over $350 million and gathered more than 20 million signatures for causes ranging from environmental protection to gay rights. The Fund holds a near-monopoly on the canvass industry, running 30 to 60 offices each summer, with thousands of canvassers working on dozens of campaigns. . .

Dana Fisher, a sociology professor at Columbia University, . . . interviewed hundreds of canvassers over a period of several years, with the permission of an organization that in her work goes under the pseudonym, "the People's Project." This organization is acknowledged to be one of the largest canvassing organizations in the United States.

Fisher found that canvassing experience severely limits the entry points for young people looking for a career in social justice. According to Fisher, the canvass industry yields a remarkably "small percentage [of canvassers who find] other work in politics after canvassing." Far more often these young people go to the private sector. (This summer, Miller took a job with a solar panel installation company.) Activism, Inc. suggests that rather than a breeding ground for new generations of grassroots activism, the industry is eating the left's young.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2787/

APRIL 2006

CORPORATIZING NON-PROFITS

[We've seen a number of non-profits lose their way as they have dumped creative and mission-related members of a board in favor of business types and fundraisers, as well as trying to imitate corporations while purportedly carrying out a social or cultural purpose. The price of this can be seen at the Smithsonian on down and contributes to America's cultural entropy. But the Boston Business Journal thinks it's just fine]

BOSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL - Throughout Boston's arts community, board members [from corporations] are helping small and midsize organizations get to the next level -- and to the next level after that. Basile is one of 107 professionals who went through the Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston's "Business on Board" program, a comprehensive program that trains and places business executives on the boards of local arts and cultural organizations. Once executives complete the program, Celeste Wilson, the council's executive director, matches trainees with an organization.

Leaders in the arts community say graduates of the program have been a boon for arts and cultural organizations that are competing for a smaller pool of funds. "We're running more like a business," says Susan Gassett, the artistic director, secretary and founder of City Stage Co., a nonprofit that brings children's theater to institutions including schools and hospitals. . . "They're wonderful," says Gassett, who oversees an operating budget of $275,000 and two full-time employees. "They really jumped right in and are very active and thoughtful. They tell me what to do. I like that."

http://boston.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2006/04/24/story2.html?page=2

JUNE 2006

PHOTO BY CAMARONN

CHILDREN REVOLT IN CHILE

GUARDIAN - Using the internet and cell phones, the students have rewritten the rules of dissent with their ability instantly to organize marches and make collective decisions. The organizers are very young, with an average age of 16, and their support goes all the way down to 11-year-olds, who organize forums and debate the right to a free education, turning their break into a civics lesson.

THE 25 YEAR PROTEST:
LONGEST VIGIL ANYWHERE

MAY 2006

THE OUTHOUSES OF UNGER

People in Unger, West Virginia, are organizing to try and stop the proposed subdivision in our tiny community. We are pleased to announce the creation of a citizens group to oppose high density subdivisions. The name we have chosen is Outhouses of Unger. We chose that name for two simple reasons. The first is that the outhouse is a symbol of Morgan County and West Virginia's proud rural heritage. The goal of our group is to keep Morgan County rural. Second is that those of us that live near this development are scared to death that our wells will go dry from the construction of that many homes in such a small area. Our motto is "If Your Well Goes Dry, You'll Need One Of These".

We are asking all people that live in the Unger area or along Winchester Grade Road to construct an outhouse on their property as a sign of support against the type of high density developemt being built in our community. These will be just temporary structures as a symbolic First Amendment protest. Materials and labor will be supplied by volunteers if you need help.

http://www.outhousesofunger.com/

25 YEARS OF WHISTLEBLOWING

THE PROJECT ON GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT is celebrating 25 years of exposing federal misconduct and corruption. Founded in 1981 as the Project on Military Procurement, POGO exposed malfunctions in military equipment that cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, pushed for the U.S. to be able to recover millions more in fines and unpaid royalties, and advocated before Congress for strong whistleblower protection laws and a more open government. Here are a few of Pogo's hits:

1981 POGO exposes first operational test failures of the M-1 tank and challenges the effectiveness of several weapons, including Air Force AWACS and terrain-guided cruise missiles.

1984 The Project exposes such purchases by the Department of Defense such as the infamous $7,600 coffee makers and $436 hammers.

1987 The Project helps defend Air Force whistleblower A. Ernest Fitzgerald's assertion of his First Amendment rights when he refuses to sign a government-wide gag order.

1991 A major government contractor, SAIC, receives the highest fine to date for environmental cleanup fraud after POGO helps expose the contractor's efforts to use its political connections with the Justice Department to escape prosecution.

1993 POGO is credited with the cancellation of the wasteful $11 billion Superconducting Supercollider project, at that time the largest government program ever cancelled.

1996 POGO-generated media attention forces Department of Interior to bill the oil industry for $385 million in unpaid royalties.

1998 POGO wins its second victory defending the False Claims Act after a POGO report shows the act helped recover $2 billion from health care fraud cases.

2001 Oil companies pay total of $440 million for fraudulently drilling on public lands - money goes to public education, and land and water conservation funds. Department of Interior also begins to collect $70 million more annually from oil companies drilling on federal, state, and Native American lands after POGO advocates for companies to pay fair market share.

2004 Department of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announces increased security standards for nuclear materials based on POGO's recommendations.

2005 POGO wins lawsuit against Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Department of Justice for illegally retroactively classifying information critical of the FBI.

http://www.pogo.org

[Your editor is a former board member of POGO]

APRIL 2005

TINY CAMERAS ALLOW THE WATCHED TO WATCH THE WATCHERS

PAUL ANDREWS, SEATTLE TIMES - With cameras getting smaller and cheaper all the time, and showing up on everything from cellphones to lapel pins, round-the-clock surveillance is becoming available to average citizens. As much as some may recoil against the thought, experts headlining a four-day conference in Seattle said yesterday putting one's own life on record could prove the best defense against growing government and corporate incursions into privacy.

Speaking at the Association for Computing Machinery's Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference, Steve Mann termed the process "sousveillance" - pronounced soo-veillance and roughly French for "to watch from below" - in contrast to surveillance, or to watch from above. In general, the term refers to using a wearable or portable video camera to record your every action.

Using sousveillance, conference panelists said, police-brutality victims or protesters at a rally would be able to record illegal actions taken against them by police.

With a wireless camera and connection, the images could be transmitted in real time over the Internet, a protection in case police moved to seize or destroy the equipment, said Mann, a University of Toronto professor who has pioneered use of wearable computing devices, including cameras and digital eyeglasses.

FEBRUARY 2005

HOWARD ZINN: WHAT CAN I DO?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/021205Y.shtml

HOWARD ZINN, THE PROGRESSIVE - What does it take to bring a turnaround in social consciousness - from being a racist to being in favor of racial equality, from being in favor of Bush's tax program to being against it, from being in favor of the war in Iraq to being against it? We desperately want an answer, because we know that the future of the human race depends on a radical change in social consciousness.

It seems to me that we need not engage in some fancy psychological experiment to learn the answer, but rather to look at ourselves and to talk to our friends. We then see, though it is unsettling, that we were not born critical of existing society. There was a moment in our lives (or a month, or a year) when certain facts appeared before us, startled us, and then caused us to question beliefs that were strongly fixed in our consciousness - embedded there by years of family prejudices, orthodox schooling, imbibing of newspapers, radio, and television.

This would seem to lead to a simple conclusion: that we all have an enormous responsibility to bring to the attention of others information they do not have, which has the potential of causing them to rethink long-held ideas. It is so simple a thought that it is easily overlooked as we search, desperate in the face of war and apparently immovable power in ruthless hands, for some magical formula, some secret strategy to bring peace and justice to the land and to the world.

"What can I do?" The question is thrust at me again and again as if I possessed some mysterious solution unknown to others. The odd thing is that the question may be posed by someone sitting in an audience of a thousand people, whose very presence there is an instance of information being imparted which, if passed on, could have dramatic consequences. The answer then is as obvious and profound as the Buddhist mantra that says: "Look for the truth exactly on the spot where you stand."

BELATED BHUTAN UPDATE

[NEWS of February's first international conference on gross national happiness has only just reached us from Bhutan.]

GOPILAL ACHARYA - The first major international seminar which drew more than 80 participants from across the globe to discuss the depth and profundity of the concept of Gross National Happiness agreed that GNH combines spirituality with secular science of technology and that the global community should protect and enhance it.

Senior professors, research fellows, journalists, lawyers, medical professionals, Buddhist monks, managers, environmentalists, economists, social activists, financiers, and academicians made 15-minute oral presentations of about 45 papers during the seminar from February 18 -20 which was attended by more than 300 people, mostly young students, graduates and civil servants. The presentations were cablecast in two separate rooms for people who could not fit in the main hall.

"Although the concept of GNH was first pronounced by His Majesty the King in his speeches soon after acceding to the throne in 1972, it was, however, only in the last two decades that the concept was formally incorporated as a guiding principle in development policies and plans," said the president of the Centre for Bhutan Studies and prime minister Lyonpo Jigmi Y Thinley inaugurating the seminar.

"While conventional development models stress economic growth as the ultimate objective, the concept of GNH is based on the premise that true development of human society takes place when material and spiritual development occur side by side to complement and reinforce each other," he said.

"The four pillars of GNH are the promotion of equitable and sustainable socio-economic development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment, and establishment of good governance.". . .

Comparing GNH to the western conservative, liberal and socialist ideologies, Professor [Mark] Mancall said that GNH is an ideology, a program of social and economic change and development. "If GNH is an ideology, the Bhutanese State is and must be the 'subject,' the primary actor in the program of change that we call GNH," said the Professor.

Some papers persuaded on why Bhutan should be cautious in joining WTO and hinted that the unchecked onslaught of globalization could choke the concept of GNH. Others argued that GNH revived the forgotten element of Adam Smith school of thought, 'compassion' as an intricate element of market economy.

Still others said that happiness is primarily subjective and usually confined to an individual.

A paper by Dr Prabhat Pankaj and Tshering Dorji, lecturers at Sherubtse college in Kanglung presented their findings of the field survey of 612 individuals which used econometric technique to measure happiness. "Our study found out that the rural people are slightly happier than the urban ones and that cultural participation and identity have emerged as the strongest variable influencing happiness both in rural and urban areas," said Dr Pankaj. "We also found that religious people tend to happier."

His Highness the Crown Prince Dasho Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck, who graced the closing of the seminar, said that even if the philosophy of GNH is inherently Bhutanese, its ideas may have a positive relevance to any nation, community or peoples.

"I feel that there must be some convergence among nations on the idea of what the primary objective of development and progress should be - something that GNH seeks to bring about," he said. "There cannot be enduring peace, prosperity, equality and brotherhood in this world if our aims are so separate and divergent especially as the world shrinks to a global village."

FEBRUARY 2004

90% OF NON-PROFITS REPORT FISCAL STRESS, BUT FIND WAYS OF COPING

U.S. non-profit organizations experienced significant fiscal stress over the past year, but still managed to increase services and boost revenue, according to a new report by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies. . .

Nearly 90 percent of the surveyed organizations reported some degree of fiscal stress over the past year, and more than half described that stress as "severe." Yet the vast majority of these agencies managed to boost their income, and nearly two-thirds reported increased activity in response to growing demand

Four out of five respondents reported expanded private fund-raising efforts and nearly 84 percent reported increased marketing and fees.

More agencies reported expanding programs, broadening their reach and speeding up innovations than reported cutting back in these areas.

Over half reported freezing salaries, decreasing benefits or increasing staff hours. More than 70 percent reported postponing hiring, eliminating vacancies, or increasing reliance on part-time staff.

Over half of the respondents reported dipping into reserves and endowments, selling real estate or other assets, and/or borrowing in the hope of future gains.

Over half cited new collaborations with other organizations.

Two thirds reported implementing or expanding their advocacy activities.

NOVEMBER 2003

ROCK AND REBEL

[From Hungarian Ambassador Andras Simonyi's speech at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland on November 8]

ANDRAS SIMONYI - I was four when Russians tanks rolled down the streets of Budapest. . . I was just a kid and I didn't really understand what was happening. But it did leave a strong mark in my mind. I must say that I had a great family - a great father, mother, a brother and a sister, who helped preserve a life for me. That was pretty much like yours; they were very protective. This family took me to Denmark in 1960 where my father was trade representative, I had the luck to go to an American school - that's probably why I picked up some English and Danish, and I had the honor to just live the ordinary life of an ordinary guy on the streets of Copenhagen. . .

While I was in Denmark, particularly in '66 and '67, like the Danes embraced the rock music at its best, like the Danes got to know Cream, Jimmy Hendrix, Zappa, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin and you name it, I got to know them as well. I was listening to this kind of music day and night. I didn't know what the underlying message was and I didn't care. I just thought this was something that I had to embrace.

In 1965, I bought with the help of my father my first guitar. . . It was a great guitar, it's a copy of a Fender Jaguar. I had a great time until in '67 we moved back to Budapest. Budapest at that time was not a very funny place. It was a pretty tough, dark, and gloomy place. It was just ten years after the 1956 revolution which was broken by the Soviets. Still, society was quietly and slowly coming alive. But it was a very tough place to be, especially for me who'd got used to freedom - freedom in the way I dressed, freedom in the way I communicated, freedom in the way I talked to people, and freedom in the way I picked up my music.

The music that I thought so much of was simply not available in Hungary. I stayed a year with an aunt and uncle of mine who turned out to be a very conservative communist. And honestly, they didn't get it when I started to explain about Good Vibrations and the Four Tops and the Spencer Davis group. She didn't understand. And my brother and I, we had a big old Bakelite radio that I got from my father so we could listen to Western radio stations and we used to listen to that at night. Listening to that music at night was very important to us to keep track of what was going on in the West. One night as we were listening to some real nice stuff, the old man came in, very angry, and took away the radio. Next day we asked for an audience and we said "Sorry for having listened to this music so loud," and he said "The problem was not that it was loud. The problem was that you were listening to a Western radio station." That was something that really hurt us - I was 14 and my brother was 16 - being told you're not allowed to listen to music on a Western radio station that we always used to listen to. That was real tough. And we got to understand very quickly that this Hungary is not very similar to the Denmark where we used to live.

Still, you had to keep going and it was so important for me, my continuing to keep in touch with the music scene in the West. It kept us sane and kind of made us part of the free world. We would listen to Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, and above all, to Radio Luxemburg. We used to listen to this stuff at night and as we listened to this radio, as we listened to Radio Luxemburg, we were suddenly out of our bodies and our soul was part of the free world. We would join our peers in the West. We would be part of the scene that was so natural for all of you here in the United States or in England or Denmark or Holland or elsewhere in the free world.

As I returned to Hungary, I was a good student. I don't know if I was smart but I always had good grades and that was in order to get things out the way so I could do my music. I did a lot of practicing, formed my own band, and got in touch with the Hungarian music scene which, strangely enough, started to grow immediately after the rock explosion in the West. The instruments were lousy, so I was a cool guy, I had great instruments. Instruments in general were no good but some guys somehow managed to get great instruments and they produced some good sound. And it was so good to be a part of this. That's where I met my old-time very best friend, Gabor Presser, who was my mentor, was my great friend - he's still my best friend, and he's still a great musician. . .

Of course, there was no records to be had. Here, you heard Led Zeppelin on the radio, the next day you walked into a record shop and bought it. In Hungary, we couldn't do that. Therefore, when we got hold of records, it was so much valuable. It was much more meaningful to us - it was not just something to consume, to buy. It wasn't just owning it; it was way beyond that. No one Hungarian had all the records, but somehow Hungarians together managed to get all the records. We would copy these records. I hope the copyright guys don't listen now because, honestly, whatever the reason, they would have clamped down on the Hungarians copying this stuff. But we would walk into this record store that would make one single copy of a record and sell it to us. We would tape it and then spread it five hundred times. That was kind of nice. That was really important to us. One way or another, we were very much part of the scene. . .

I created my own band and it was kind of a strange band. . . We used to play Cream in '67, '68 and '69. I would do Rory Gallagher, I would do some early Fleetwood Mac stuff. It was really very special because I'd always thought this was at the avant-garde of rock music. In 1969 however a band led by Stevie Winwood called Traffic, which I loved so much, came to Budapest. I had no idea how they got there and it was the strangest thing because I would know all the Traffic tunes by heart, you name it and I could sing it and I try to play it. "Mr. Fantasy" and "Medicated Goo," or whatever. . .

With the help of my father, I figured out where Traffic would be staying, which hotel, and after the concert I'd hang out at the hotel and Stevie Winwood shows up and it is like, I don't know, may I say it is like God showing up? And I started talking to him and we had some words and he said I'm sorry, I got to go, but I figured out that maybe it would be a good idea that I act as a guide for the rest of the group. So I took Jim Capaldi, the drummer, and Albert, the road manager down to Lake Balaton - which, by the way, is a place you've to got visit sometime - and we hung out for a couple of days. I was very really into something very special, talking to these people. That left a lasting mark on my attitude to music. Here is what happened: A few weeks ago my guys came back and said Stevie Winwood is playing in Washington this weekend. We got hold of Stevie Winwood and I went down to see the concert, a great concert. We started talking about what happened 35 years ago. He said "Yes, I remember. I didn't go to the Lake with you because I had to go and listen to some gipsy music." And I said "Steve, how did you get [to Hungary]?" He said "I don't know because we didn't go to any of the other East European communist countries." "Can you give me an explanation?" He said "Call Chris Blackwell." So I called Chris Blackwell, who was then their manager and I asked, "Chris, what the hell was Traffic doing in Hungary?" He said, "Look, I think you had some opening in '68 because no one else would take us in but Hungarians were crazy with this music and somehow the authorities allowed this to happen."

I didn't know then, and it didn't click, that was exactly the couple of years when the system lightened up a little, culture lightened up a little, economy lightened up a little, and of course Hungarians embraced as much as they could from the free world in this short opening which only lasted until 1972. But it was also something interesting that I have to tell you, and it didn't click before I talked to Steve Winwood: Hungarians didn't understand the text [of any of the rock tunes]. And I just suddenly realized that it was not the text but the power of music, the power of a couple of guys standing on stage with a Stratocaster, with a Fender bass, a guy playing on organ, a drummer playing a Gretsch drum set, that really made Hungarians think this was something very important.

So while the authorities tried to limit through the propaganda machinery the impact of this on Hungarians and obviously also on other Central Eastern Europeans, there was no way to stop the onslaught of the message of freedom through rock and roll. That was the most powerful instrument to convey the message to my generation about the free world. I do believe today, what the satellite and VHS was for the '80s and what the Internet is today, was rock and roll and rock music in the '60s and the early '70s. It was about sending a strong message of freedom through the Berlin Wall to us who were living behind the Iron Curtain. . .

We wanted to make music come as close to the best of the best in the free world as we could. . . And the funny thing was - you should understand that the lyrics were censored. We always had to scratch out something. We always had to change the words. When we spoke about the freedom of man or the freedom of the world, they would put something foolish into the text. They didn't realize that the music itself was more powerful than the text. They didn't realize that the real power lay in the music. So therefore my fellow musicians, those who came after us, they tried and expanded our little freedoms as much as they could. Sometimes they would hurt us, sometimes they wouldn't. Sometimes they would "understand" what we were doing, sometimes not. . .

In 1972, I was going to defect from Hungary. I said, this is not the world I want to live in. I remember in 1972, I was standing in the railway station in Copenhagen and I called my mother and I said "Mom, I am not coming home." And she said "Son, okay, you're not coming home, but then I and Dad and your brother and sister will not be able to live the lives we want them to live." So I went back. And frankly, I didn't regret it because in 1974 I met Nada, my wife. That was a big deal and I think I enchanted her by starting to - I remember we were sitting in a bus and I started explaining to her about the new George Harrison hit "Bangladesh" and, you know, I described it to her from all angles. I think I was successful because she changed a lot through my convincing.

But I also want to tell you that in the meanwhile there was a hardening of the system and two guys from the band Locomotive GT defected to the United States. The drummer [Jozsef (Joe) Laux], and my great friend and hero the guitarist Tamas Barta. The saddest of all stories is that Tamas arrived in the United States and figured out that he will not be the great star that he used to be in Hungary and he will not be able to make it here and he ended up being shot in Los Angeles. It's a sad story but he really never was able to leave Hungary spiritually. Wanted to embrace so much the free world, the West. And this collision of the lack of freedom and wanting to be a Hungarian led to his fate. I miss him still. . .

In 1988. . . Amnesty International was on a world tour, and that was the year when I knew the Wall will be torn down and we will put an end to the Cold War and Hungary will soon be free. Amnesty International was brought to Hungary by Sting, Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman, and Bruce Springsteen. Just imagine the powerful message of Bruce Springsteen singing "Born in the USA" at the stadium in Budapest and 80,000 Hungarian kids roaring and saying, yes, we're together. That was the year when I was 100 percent convinced that [communism] will be over soon. My friends in the West reacted in disbelief, but I was right. What stronger message than the message that came through rock music can you imagine?

In 1989, the world moved on and Hungary was free again. You might wonder, what next? My personal life, the music that I embraced all my life has played an incredible role of since. I have a very easy rapport with my friends and colleagues in the West, primarily in the United States. I got to know friends who are working for the U.S. government when we suddenly figured out that we were listening to the same kind of music. I name one song, you name the band. That's how I met your ambassador to Moscow [Alexander Vershbow], who used to be my friend and colleague in NATO, and he used to be a rock musician when he was a kid, still plays. And as we grew closer, as Hungary started to move into NATO, the closer this friendship grew. We jammed together and this really made our friendship close. We both agree that this is something that has to continue to glue us together.

I believe that rock music is not imperial, not imperialistic. Mozart used to belong to the Austrians. Does anyone ask anywhere in the world - in China, in the United States, in Brazil, in Moscow - where Mozart came from? You couldn't care less. The music that Traffic played, that Cream played, that Jimmy Hendrix played, that "Skunk" Baxter played belongs not to the United States or to the UK any longer - it belongs all of us. . . Rock and roll music is universal; it is a universal language. It's easy to embrace. It speaks to the people. That is why it was so useful and meaningful in penetrating communist society. Because it was understandable for all the peoples. It was not aristocratic, it belonged to all of us, the man on the street - the little guy who was walking on the streets of Budapest and the little guy who was walking on the streets of Warsaw or Prague. Just like the little guy walking in the streets of New York, Los Angeles, or Cleveland.

Try, if you haven't tried it, the excitement of strumming a Stratocaster. I think that's the closest you can get to heaven before you really get there. Rock is about freedom, rock is believing in our freedom and the freedom of others. I reject the attacks that I hear on rock and roll music. . .

MUSIC FOR AMERICA - At the beginning of 2003, almost no one on the Music for America staff had participated in politics beyond showing up at the polls in November. Now we're all grown up with our own, national organization. We have offices on both coasts, and we're part of the biggest grass-roots movement in American political history. . . Music for America was started by a group young, disenchanted voters who became active in politics through the Meetup phenomenon. After the 2000 election and the Bush Administration's marginalization of the millions who protested against the buildup to war with Iraq, we collectively came to three realizations:

1. Protest had become an impotent act in today's political arena. Protesters tend to be reactionary and turn more people off of politics than they turn on; and this administration has shown that no matter how large an outcry is heard from the people, it will pursue its own agenda. Millions of people, many of us young and politically active for the first time, took to the streets on February 15th, 2003, yet the administration, and the media, dismissed us as a "focus group."

2. Young voters were consistently being silenced or ignored in the political process. When was the last time a politician addressed an issue that directly and immediately concerned someone under 30? With the exception of some lip service paid to the environment, probably never. When was the last time a candidate was genuinely interested in what someone under 30 had to say and altered their policies or positions accordingly?

3. Culture and politics are inseparable; and our peers, by participating in culture, have already been making political statements without realizing it. Do you dislike the fact that every radio station plays the same 40 songs? Are you scared of being prosecuted for file sharing? Do you think it's bullshit that artists have so little control over their own music and make little - if any - money from CD sales? These are just a few issues that illustrate the intersection of culture and politics. Every one of these situations is the result of a piece of legislation already passed or currently being lobbied, and every one of these deals with some aspects of the culture you are participating in every day. We believed that a lot of people probably felt the same way we did.

FREEWAY BLOGGING

ROCK & REBEL

HUNGARY - STEVE LUTTNER CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER - Andras Simonyi [above left] came to Cleveland last night to give credit to rock 'n' roll for helping bring down the Iron Curtain. Simonyi, the Hungarian ambassador to the United States, is a hard-core rocker in a pinstriped suit. He believes that the blaring rock tunes that were broadcast by Western radio stations into Soviet-dominated nations such as Hungary in the 1960s, '70s and '80s helped to undermine the repressive regime. "It was like a window to the free world," Simonyi, 51, said in an interview before he spoke to a private group last night at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. . . In the late '60s, some Western bands such as Traffic were permitted to tour Hungary. Simonyi said he and other young Hungarians were greatly influenced by such groups, watching them play without any limits on what they could sing about. "You had four or five guys up on the stage with so much power," Simonyi said. "It was a breath of fresh air." Efforts to limit or prevent the availability of Western rock in Hungary at that time were futile, Simonyi said. A black market of rock albums flourished on the streets of Budapest. It was unstoppable," he said.

CZECHOSLOVAKIA - MATT WELCH, REASON - [Vaclav] Havel, the somewhat shy scion of a bourgeois family (which owned, among other things, the wonderful Lucerna Theatre on Wenceslas Square), was particularly drawn to and awed by the "authentic culture" of unbridled rock music, in a way that recalls the rather prim Orwell's fascination with Henry Miller. He preferred the Stones to the Beatles (let alone Clinton's favorite, Fleetwood Mac), and took from rock-influenced '60s culture "a temperament, a nonconformist state of the spirit, an anti-establishment orientation, an aversion to philistines, and an interest in the wretched and humiliated," he wrote in his underrated 1991 reflection on governing, Summer Meditations. . .

In April 1975, facing an utterly demoralized country and an understandable case of writer's block, Havel committed an act of such sheer ballsiness that the shock waves are still being felt in repressive countries 30 years later. He simply sat down and, knowing that he'd likely be imprisoned for his efforts, wrote an open letter to his dictator, Gustav Husak, explaining in painstaking detail just why and how totalitarianism was ruining Czechoslovakia.

"So far," Havel scolded Husak, "you and your government have chosen the easy way out for yourselves, and the most dangerous road for society: the path of inner decay for the sake of outward appearances; of deadening life for the sake of increasing uniformity; of deepening the spiritual and moral crisis of our society, and ceaselessly degrading human dignity, for the puny sake of protecting your own power."

It was the Big Bang that set off the dissident movement in Central Europe. For those lucky enough to read an illegally retyped copy or hear it broadcast over Radio Free Europe, the effect was not unlike what happened to the 5,000 people who bought the Velvet Underground's first record: After the shock and initial pleasure wore off, many said, "Wait a minute, I can do this too!" By standing up to a system that had forced every citizen to make a thousand daily compromises, Havel was suggesting a novel new tactic: Have the self-respect to tell the truth, never mind the consequences, and maybe you'll put the bastards on the defensive. . .

This act of literary punk rock was followed, logically enough, by a defense of rock music that sparked the Charter 77 movement. Or, as Havel told a startled Lou Reed when he met the Velvet Underground's former frontman in 1990, "Did you know that I am president because of you?" In 1968 a rare copy of the Velvet Underground's first record somehow found its way to Prague. It became a sensation in music circles and beyond, eventually inspiring the Czech name for their bloodless 1989 overthrow of Communist rule, "the Velvet Revolution."

UNITED STATES - SAM SMITH, WHY BOTHER? - In rock and rap -- as in blues and folk music earlier -- people found that what they couldn't achieve could still be sung or shouted about. And central to this sound was not just a message but who was allowed to deliver it. For example, the music webzine, Fast 'n' Bulbous, described punk this way:

"Punk gives the message that no one has to be a genius to do it him/herself. Punk invented a whole new spectrum of do-it-yourself projects for a generation. Instead of waiting for the next big thing in music to be excited about, anyone with this new sense of autonomy can make it happen themselves by forming a band. Instead of depending on commercial media, from the big papers and television to New Musical Express and Rolling Stone, to tell them what to think, anyone can create a fanzine, paper, journal or comic book. With enough effort and cooperation they can even publish and distribute it. Kids were eventually able to start their own record labels too. Such personal empowerment leads to other possibilities in self-employment and activism.

To move from challenging record companies to taking on the World Trade Organization was not an easy or obvious journey, but clearly some of the attitudes that made the anti-globalization protests possible were formed in clubs and not at conferences. . .

By the end of the 1990s, an unremittingly political band, Rage Against the Machine, had sold more than 7 million copies of its first two albums and its third, The Battle of Los Angele, (released on Election Day 1999), sold 450,000 copies its first week. Nine months later, there would be a live battle of Los Angeles as the police shut down a RATM concert at the Democratic Convention.

Throughout the 1990s, during a nadir of activism and an apex of greed, RATM both raised hell and made money. In 1993 the band, appearing at Lollapalooza III in Philadelphia, stood naked on stage for 15 minutes without singing or playing a note in a protest against censorship. . . In 1997, well before most college students were paying any attention to the issue, Rage's Tom Morello was arrested during a protest against sweatshop labor. Throughout this period no members of the band were invited to discuss politics with Ted Koppel or Jim Lehrer. But a generation heard them anyway.

IDEAS
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DECEMBER 2006

LOCAL CURRENCY

[Several readers expressed skepticism about Berk Shares, the new local currency in a Massachusetts community, Here are some things we have previously written on this topic]

SAM SMITH, SHADOWS OF HOPE, 1994 - During the last recession, the lease for a certain restaurant in Great Barrington, Mass., expired. The local bank wouldn't lend restaurateur Frank Tortrello money to move across the street. So Frank decided to print his own. He called them Deli Dollars. Each sold for $9 and could be redeemed for $10 worth of food after six months. Not only did the idea provide Frank with enough money to make his move, but it spread throughout the community. A local farm issued notes with the slogan "In Farms We Trust," featuring the head of a cabbage instead of the head of a president. New restaurants followed with their own currency and the local bills started showing up everywhere, including in church collection plates.

Others are also reinventing money. Alternative currency has cropped up in Ithaca NY and is being used by 700 individuals and business. In Seattle, some have devised cardboard money. In another town, wooden coins.

Then there's Daisy Alexander, a retiree from Montclair, New Jersey, and Pepe, a recent immigrant from Havana, Cuba. They both live in a low-income senior housing development section of Miami, Florida. At first glance, Daisy and Pepe seem to have little in common. But they are bound to each other -- in friendship and through the common bonds of a new economic system called time dollars or service credits.
Time dollars, described in the book Time Dollars: A Currency for the 90's by Edgar Cahn and Jonathan Rowe, operate like a blood bank. People help others in their community and get credits in a computer data base that they can draw upon in times of need. Cahn and Rowe describe how time dollars have transformed over 100 communities and how grass-roots groups built the new currency.

Here's how it works for Daisy and Pepe: Daisy volunteers three days a week tutoring first graders at the elementary school across the street from her home. Every week Pepe comes to her house and takes her grocery shopping. An amputee with a cane, Daisy is dependent on Pepe to provide this service for her. But no money changes hands. Daisy simply "cashes in" the time dollars she earns tutoring to "pay" for Pepe's shopping help. In turn Pepe earns time dollars to buy services he needs. But Daisy and Pepe gain in other ways as well. Both are renewed and enthused about the opportunity for helping, and inspired by the social activities that the sense of community has produced.

"The potential benefits of the time dollars concept are limitless. It can touch every life in every community, ranging from an apartment complex to an entire nation, every facility, from a nursing home to a university campus," says author Cahn. "It fosters a sense of financial independence, camaraderie, community spirit, harmony among age groups, races, religions, income levels, and even political adversaries."

In each of these cases, citizens have come to understand that money is just a way that we translate the value of products and services. Just because one may not have money does not mean there is no value to be exchanged. It is simply a matter of coming up with a way to keep track of it without the services of the Federal Reserve.

SAM SMITH'S GREAT AMERICAN POLITICAL REPAIR MANUAL, 1997 - It's legal to print your own money provided that it can't be mistaken for the government kind -- the Secret Service frowns on that. In fact, says Barbara Brandt in Whole Life Economics, in the 1860s there were more than ten thousand different kinds of locally issued bank notes in use in the US simultaneously, including that issued by state banks. After the creation of federal banking during the Civil War and a federal reserve system in the early 1900s, the variety of money in this country contracted. But in the 1930s, when communities found themselves with products, needs, skills and labor but little money, local currencies made a comeback. Writes Brandt: "In numerous communities, local governments, business associations, or charitable groups began to create their own money systems for local use. Local depression money came in many variations: vouchers that could only be traded in specific stores, or for specific items, and printed currencies (often called 'scrip') on paper, cardboard, or even wood, which had to be spent within the community a certain number of times or before a certain date. . . By 1933, the New York Times reported that one million Americans in three hundred communities were using barter or scrip system to keep their economies going. Today there is a revival of community money -- or green dollars as it is sometimes called. In 1983, Michael Linton developed a local exchange trading system on Vancouver Island that created $350,000 worth of trading in its first four years."

In Ithaca NY, some half million dollars worth of local trade has been added to the economy through Ithaca Hour notes. An Ithaca Hour is based on the average local wage, about $10 an hour. Ithica Hours have been used to buy plumbing, child care, car repair, and eyeglasses. They are accepted at restaurants, movie theatres, bowling alleys, and health clubs. As Paul Glover explained, "We printed our own money because we watched federal dollars come to town, shake a few hands, then leave to buy rain forest lumber and to fight wars. The local money, on the other hand, stays in our region to help us hire each other."

THE TROUBLE WITH SMASHING THE STATE

CAMERON, GREEN COMMONS - Every agenda for social change that I've ever heard of that involved "smashing the state" suffers from a logic design flaw known as "logical race condition." Anarchists, Marxist-Leninists, and the modern movement claiming the proper name "Libertarian" make the same mistake.

Behavior of a system with a logical race condition is determined by factors that are to a great extent random or chaotic (randomness and chaos are not the same) or at least poorly controlled. Race conditions are one of the most common software design mistakes that create security holes. Something that should be protected is exposed temporarily, and it's a race between the end of the exposure and the attacker trying to exploit it.

When the state is "smashed," a race begins. The different cliques who seek power race to grab it, and whoever gets there first is the new state. Trouble is, authoritarians usually get there first, because they're unencumbered with (slow) democratic process. There is no mechanism, during the transient "smashed state" condition, to prevent this race from occurring. Power vacuums always get filled. That's why armed revolutions and coups d'etat tend to make things worse for the working class.

http://www.greencommons.org/

RECOVERED HISTORY

PROTESTS, like everything else in life, can become pretty sterile. But browsing an online history of punk in DC, we came across a fascinating description of the role of local punk rockers in the anti-apartheid movement including drumming the hell out of the South African embassy. Go to the site, click on enter and then find the embassy on the map.

WHY SOCIAL MOVEMENTS DON'T WORK

MICHAEL ALBERT, who advocates what he calls participatory economics, has some important thoughts on why current day social movements don't do better in this interview. It's a point your editor has been trying to make for sometime, as in his 1993 book "Shadows of Hope:"Go back to the 60s and Ralph Nader was about the only public interest lawyer in town who wore a suit and his wasn't pressed. Today, many advocacy groups have drifted into the lawyerly style and pace of the establishment they are supposedly trying to change. They have, in their own way, become capital institutions, part of the ritualized, status-conscious, and very safe, trench warfare of the city."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMIDo42fvhs

This icon was designed by Bruce Schneier as a symbol of individual rights. It represents the right to privacy and anonymity in the information age. It represents the rights to an open government, due process, and equal protection under the law. It represents the right to live surveillance free, and not to be marked as "suspicious" for wanting these other rights.

The symbol is not owned by any organization. There is no platform, no organizational structure, no meetings. This symbol is in the public domain: uncopyrighted, untrademarked, unowned. Anyone can use it for any purpose. You can buy some items with the symbol at this site

NOVEMBER 2004

BOYCOTTS ARE BACK

PAUL ROCKWELL, COMMON DREAMS - In her address at the World Social Forum in Porte Allegre, Brazil, January 27th, 2003, Arundhati Roy put out a call for a new strategy of non-cooperation. . . "The U.S. economy," she writes, "is strung out across the globe. It's economic outposts are exposed and vulnerable. Our strategy must be to isolate empire's working parts and disable them one by one. No target is too small. No victory too insignificant."

"We could reverse the idea of economic sanctions imposed on poor countries by Empire and its Allies. We could impose a regime of people's sanctions on every corporation that has been awarded a contract in post-war Iraq. Each one of them should be named, exposed and boycotted-forced out of business. It would be a great start."

Weekend protests, Roy tells us, are not enough. "What we need to discuss urgently are strategies of resistance...Gandhi's salt march was not just political theatre. In a simple act of defiance, thousands of Indians marched to the sea and made their own salt. It was a direct strike at the economic underpinning of the British Empire."

"Already the Internet is buzzing with elaborate lists of American and British government products and companies that should be boycotted...They could become a practical guide that directs and channels the amorphous but growing fury in the world." . . .

All over the world, peace and anti-globalization movements are preparing to put Roy's concepts into practice. They are calling for a new kind of strategy to end the occupation of Iraq: a well-organized, sustained boycott of U.S. and British goods. In its range and scope, the coming boycott (including divestment from U.S. corporations) could resemble the historic boycott of South African apartheid. . .

Boycotts have often changed the world. The American Revolution began with the Boston Tea Party. The non-violent movement that brought down the British Empire included Gandhi's boycott against British textiles. The Montgomery bus boycott launched the civil rights movement. The United Farm Workers in the U.S., led by Caesar Chavez, were unionized through laborious national boycotts of lettuce and grapes. And of course, the international boycott of South Africa played a vital role in bringing down the system of apartheid.

Sporadic and spontaneous boycotts, local in form, have been taking place in cities throughout the globe. National Public Radio (U.S.) reports that thousands of Europeans, repulsed by the election of Bush, are refusing to buy American goods. One placard in a Paris window says: "Promote peace. Don't buy American." According to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, Europe is simmering. "You're going to see American profits disappear. American corporations are going to be in big trouble. It's going to be a mantra not to buy American. All our major manufacturers are reporting major slowdowns in Europe. You're going to see the dollar disappear."

OCTOBER 2004

THE GHOST OF SAUL ALINSKY RETURNS

[A wonderful example of the sort of coalition that can be built around a single issue even if participants disagree on many other things. In addition to the groups mentioned below two local car dealers, some resataurant owners, and the owner of four gas stations have also come out agains the stadium]

S.A. MILLER, WASHINGTON TIMES - A diverse coalition including local politicians, black-power militants, homosexual activists and child-welfare advocates has emerged to oppose plans for a Major League Baseball stadium in Southeast, as the D.C. Council today begins debating legislation for the "sweetheart" ballpark deal. A group calling itself No D.C. Taxes for Baseball, made up of more than 20 organizations ranging from the New Black Panther Party to D.C. Action for Children, plans to demonstrate this morning on the steps of the John A. Wilson Building, home of the City Council and the mayor's office. . . Other groups in the coalition are the Campaign for the D.C. School Budget, the Council of Latino Agencies, D.C. Black Church Initiative, D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, D.C. Library Renaissance Project, the D.C. League of Women Voters, Parents United for the D.C. Public Schools, Save D.C. Parks and Play Spaces, the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless and Wider Opportunities for Women. Although they represent an array of causes, the groups are united in the belief that the District could better spend taxpayer money on any one of their missions. They also agree that when the Montreal Expos relocate to the District, the team could make RFK Stadium its permanent home.

NOT SO BARE WITNESS
BUT IT'S ALASKA AFTER ALL. About 375 clothed people formed an S.O.S. and a peace sign in a snow covered hayfield near Fairbanks, to speak out against the threatened war in Iraq. The sign, created by a diverse group of peace activists and church members, was 100 feet tall and 250 feet wide. For an incredible collection of similar protests around the world go to Baring Witness DORIS PFALMER PFOTO

AUGUST 2003

DISTRIBUTED PROTEST

SYDNEY INDY MEDIA - There's been discussion in geek circles about using the idea of flash mobs in protests. The idea is to get a large number of protestors to spread out over the target area and blanket it for a certain time. Rather than gathering a couple of hundred people outside the town hall, put a couple of people on each of the street corners in the central city, each with a placard and flyers. This way the protest reaches many more people directly, and in a more approachable way - one or two people are not as intimidating as a big group, and are more able to use the space without breaking any laws.

Media impact will most probably come indirectly. The first protest might get direct media, as they chase about trying to find out what's going on. After that I think it's more likely to be viral - people telling others about what they saw and the flyer they got. I think this is actually more useful to groups looking for an educational campaign rather than to apply media pressure to a politician, for instance.

If the police do ask someone to move on, they use the Critical Mass technique of moving on, and making the movement part of the protest. Simply move to the next corner, and if it's already occupied, those people move back to the first one. Or move on in turn. That way no one ends up getting pushed from one end of the city to the other. This makes the protest very difficult to shut down, as the cops have to round up a hundred or more small groups of people, each of whom is doing very little out of the ordinary.

KURO5HIN - When I went to the June 23rd protest against Bush and his abuse of the office of President, I held up a provocative sign, "Why did Bush block the investigation of the 9/11 attacks?" The protest was large and loud - as it should be. A few thousand people showed up, but many of them could not find a place to stand in the pens that were set aside for the protest. After the protest, I walked to Bryant park - with my sign - and noticed that I got a lot more attention as a "lone-protestor." People came up to me and asked questions. Everyone in sight plainly read my sign, and many people asked me to turn it - so they could get a better view.

It dawned on me that another way to protest is for everyone to simply carry a sign on the street, on a designated day. That way more people will see the message. Imagine how powerful it would be that when you went to work, or to the shops, saw a person carrying a sign on every block, no matter where you looked and as far as you went. . .

To comply with the law and make a stronger message there are several simple rules:

Leave your house within a precise time, and bring a sign to an area, possibly with limits, that's convenient to you. If you see another protestor nearby, acknowledge them and move on. Avoid police. Lower your sign or walk away when told to. Raise it up again when you are out of the contended area. Persistent avoidance makes the mob, as a whole, impossible to stop. Use cardboard, foam-core or paper signs only. Art supply stores sell cardboard tubes suitable to use instead of sticks. Police officers can legally confiscate signs with sticks, claiming that they are potential weapons. Respond to requests for more information with clear answers or a printed flyer. What's critical about this form of media is the timing. Anyone can wear a t-shirt and make very little impact. However, when very large groups of people wear them on the same day, it has a deeper resonance.

Other ideas for making the protest work. Not necessary, but useful:

- Stick to crowded areas. This one is obvious. Distributed protests only work in busy metro areas, or malls, etc.

- Also, nighttime is fine for a vigil or rally, but not for a distributed protest.

- If you insist on using t-shirt mobs, use a site like cafepress.com to have a T-shirt drive. After you have enough buyers, email all the buyers and ask them to wear the T-shirt on the same day and in the same place. You will need a much shorter timeline and a 3-5 times higher density for this to be effective, so make sure your venue is small enough. For example, 500 people wearing the same t-shirt showing up at a mall at the same time. . .

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